


who needs cupid's arrow if you can get a five hundred thousand won coupon instead

by spellchecks



Category: BTOB, K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, fics for my sister, minhoon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-01-15 06:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12315561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellchecks/pseuds/spellchecks
Summary: Loosely inspired by a prompt which goes like this:"Person A’s favourite restaurant holds a special where if you go with your partner, you get a discount.Since person A is single, they ask person B (could be a friend or a random stranger they find outside the restaurant) to pretend to be their partner.Person A gets spotted by some friends, and by the next day, everyone thinks A and B are going out."





	1. Ilhoon's wit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jijal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jijal/gifts).



> happy birthday (week, i guess since i'm very late lmao) to my sister! congrats, you're this old and still read fanfiction!  
> (i swear i'm going to update the other two chapters soon)

The two words anyone would use to describe Jung Ilhoon were most likely "bitter" and "cynical" or "reserved" and "mean" or any similar variation and combination of traits like these. He himself, however, did not agree with that sentiment. What his colleagues, friends and even family would call "pessimistic" he'd call "realistic" or what they saw as him being cold he knew was just him being awkward or maybe a bit bored.

So he knew what they would say if they saw him now, standing in front of his all time favorite dinner place, looking like someone had just spit in his face. They'd call him an anti-romantic or something as ridiculous. But who wouldn't seem like one, really, if their usually borderline bland looking go to restaurant had turned into a pink heart-infested love land over night. And he wasn't exeggarating.The place was nearly unrecognizable from all of the Valentine’s Day decorations it was practically buried under.

However, being the always optimistic guy he wasn't known to be, Ilhoon still had a tiny bit of hope left that the place would look better once he was inside. Maybe the owners just didn't want their restaraunt to differ from the other shops in the street and thus simply amped up its outside décor a bit. That was what he desperately clung to at least.

As always optimism didn't pay off for him. Somehow the eatery looked even worse inside than out. Tables draped in pink, heart shaped plates, cupid-like uniforms for the waiters and waitresses and an unbelievable amount of couples apparently enjoying their dates. It could have might as well been Halloween for him.

When, after a few seconds of thought, he decided to simply get out and eat at McDonald's instead and turned around to do just that, however, there was suddenly one of the cupids right in front of him. All of his willpower went into stopping himself from yelping and looking like he almost just peed in his pants, so he couldn't even take his chance and flee as if he hadn't seen her. Seemed like he had to talk a minimum of two sentences to get out of this without making people think he stole something.

“Welcome, welcome, there! Today is an absolutely lovely dovely day, don’t you think?” The waitress practically blared into his face, reminding him of why he hated social interactions with strangers in costumes. Encounters like those never ended all too well for him and his pride.

“Uh, I guess?” Ilhoon mumbled back, trying to mask his slightly panic-stricken expression with a rather nonchalant one. Knowing that he probably failed terribly at that, he was extremely glad there were no mirrors in his line of sight.

The cupid girl didn't seem to care about his - most likely - weirdly contorted face anyway and went straight on with testing his patience.

“Let me inform you of our special events today! As it is the Day of Valentine couples get 50% off their food and drinks, also there will be a Best Couple Contest, which will be rewarded with a 500 000 won coupon for the lucky winners! Now are you here as a single or waiting for your date?” she rattled off without even stopping to take in some air.

Now the answer he gave to that question might make the confidence he usually had in his wit seem unfounded or a bit deluded on his side, but really he was simply caught off guard by that question! So he had said the first thing he could think of:

"Yes?"

In his defence, that word could have meant a lot of things, but of course the waitress took it completely wrong.

Her smile got even wider as she nodded and motioned him to follow her to an empty table at one of the windows. For two. Well, there was no non embarrassing way to get out of this situation now, was there?

“There you go, I assume you’d like to wait for your girlfriend before you order something? Or can I bring you a beverage while you wait?”

“Err,” Ilhoon continued his streak of eloquent answers “no?”

“Alrighty! Just call me over once you’re ready!”

And with that she was off to leave Ilhoon alone and wallow in a mixture of self hatred and a light sense of dread that was building in his stomach. There was no way he could just get up and walk out, there were too many people present and he wasn't quite shameless enough for that. He could pretend to have been dumped by his date, but that would most likely end in some huge awkward mess he wasn’t very eager to experience (especially because he was a bit of a bad liar). So logically the only way to get out of this was to somehow find a date. Easy.

After glancing around in the most subtle way he could manage, Ilhoon fished out his mobile phone from his pocket and started scrolling through his contacts. The process of finding him a good pretend date, however, turned out to be harder than he thought it would. First he crossed off all the people he didn’t know well enough off his mental list, then the ones that were most likely busy or most likely not in the area and lastly he eliminated everyone that would end up teasing him too much about this whole ordeal. Using this technique left him with exactly one contact: his mom.

A not very well stifled groan escaped Ilhoon as he buried his head in his arms. There was no way in hell this would turn out well for him.

The sudden soft tap on his shoulder, which wrenched him out of his self pity, nearly gave him a heart attack. He flinched ridiculously obvious and almost gave himself whiplash by how fast he turned his head around to look at the person who wanted to lead him to a premature death.

The first things he noticed when his eyes found the culprit was that the guy had an unbelievably cute face and looked just about as surprised as Ilhoon felt.

“Oh god, sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you,” the cute guy smiled the prettiest cat-like smile at him, which made his face ten times more gorgeous.

“I… It’s fine?” Ilhoon asked his answer again. Honestly, there was something very wrong with him that day. Of course this would happen the one time he got the chance to talk to some unrealistically handsome guy, for God's sake!

"Mind if I join you?" The guy motioned to the empty chair opposite Ilhoon.

"Yes, I mean, no, I mean, go ahead!" Ilhoon blurted out while simultaneously cringing inwardly.

If anything the guy merely seemed amused and kind of pleased with Ilhoon's inability to be smooth in any way and sat down with a hint of smugness in his eyes. 

"My name is Minhyuk, by the way," he offered.

Before Ilhoon could respond though, the cupid waitress from earlier appeared at their table and cut their conversation short.

“I see your date has arrived! May I take your orders now?” she beamed at them, already taking out her notepad and pen to write down their choices.

"Sure," Minhyuk replied instantly, casually took the previously discarded menu from where it was lying around and started ordering surprisingly fast considering he had sat down only a few seconds ago.

After Ilhoon ordered what he always ate and the waitress took away the menu and walked off with a polite smile, Minhyuk started their conversation again.

"You know, how about we just go with this couple thing? I'd really like that discount to be honest. Except, you're actually waiting for your date...?" Minhyuk grinned at Ilhoon, who - in spite of the other's confident tone - was nintey percent sure that he could see a bit of uncertainty in his eyes.

"I'm fine with it," Ilhoon hesitated for a bit before continuing "In truth; I was already frantically searching for someone to be that date."

That statement made Minhyuk burst out in laughter, at which Ilhoon felt some sense of pride, enough to start smiling widely himself.

"I'm Ilhoon, by the way."

Maybe this evening wouldn't turn out to be too bad after all.

 

 


	2. Minhyuk's charm

Ilhoon missed him. It had merely been a week since their pretend-date on Valentine's Day, but he already craved for some sort of contact with Minhyuk again. He was the only thing Ilhoon could think about, which left him so distracted that he ended up constantly zoning out and running into objects and people. He really couldn't concentrate on anything else. If only he had had enough courage to ask for his number.

"Jeez, Ilhoon, will you  _please_ answer Hyunsik's question already?"

Changsub shouted from the back of their composing slash hang-out room, pulling Ilhoon out of his Minhyuk-infested musings for once.

"Sorry, hyung, what'd you say?" Ilhoon asked Hyunsik, trying to ignore Changsub's presence behind them.

Hyunsik, who was sitting beside him in front of their equipment, just shot Ilhoon a little smile and shook his head.

"You know, we can postpone this if you'd like-"

"No!" Ilhoon interrupted, "No, it’s fine, hyung. We need to finally finish this or we'll never get it done."

They had wanted to complete Ilhoon's mixtape for half a year now, Hyunsik helping him write songs and providing him with not only a nice place to work, but also good equipment, yet somehow the work just never went smoothly. Especially not since Ilhoon had met Minhyuk and couldn’t get the picture of his damn face out of his head.

“Listen,” Hyunsik turned towards him with a look so sincere Ilhoon felt guilt creeping up and settle in his stomach “if there’s anything wrong, anything that bothers you or that you need help with, you know you can tell me, right?”

His heart sank a bit; Hyunsik seemed genuinely worried for him, when the only thing wrong was that he had the hots for someone.

Ilhoon hesitated a bit, wondering what would be a good answer to sound reassuring, or if he should just tell Hyunsik what was going on, perhaps he’d even help him get over it or something. But then, before he could say so much as a word, Changsub chimed in again.

“Yeah Ilhoonie, you can always tell us!” he said, a strong hint of mockery in his voice.

Ilhoon threw him a glare over his shoulder.

“Shut up, hyung,” he glowered “What are you doing here anyway?”

Changsub made a noise that sounded dangerously like cackling.

“Why? You’d rather someone else was here instead?”

Ilhoon felt his brow furrow at that question. Why would Changsub say that? Did he know something about him and Minhyuk or was Ilhoon just too obvious in having a crush?

There was no point in asking Changsub himself though, that way he would know for sure that Ilhoon liked someone and he had an image to uphold, so he simply snorted and turned back to Hyunsik instead.

“I’m fine, hyung, really,” he said while putting on his best slightly-annoyed-but-still-grateful-face.

Hyunsik sighed a little, not in the least put off by Ilhoon and Changsub’s exchange before, and made to move on, when Changsub apparently decided that he hadn’t had enough just yet.

“You wanna know why our resident asshole is behaving like that lately?” he asked in Hyunsik’s direction, a mysterious grin plastered on his face. It must have been a rhetorical question because before Hyunsik even turned to look at him, he already made to answer.

“He’s in  _love_!” He sang, drawing out the o in love for  _five_   _whole_   _seconds_.

Ilhoon felt heat rising in his cheeks and ears. That had been absolutely unnecessary. While willing the red in his face to go away again, he simply rolled his eyes, trying to act like Changsub was just talking nonsense.

“What are you even talking about?”

Too bad Ilhoon was a horrible liar. One glance at Hyunsik already told him he was completely screwed now. His friend's whole attention was on him and there was a huge grin on his face.

“How cute!" Did Hyunsik just  _coo_? "Who is it?”

“No one!” Ilhoon groaned “So will you please leave me alone with this?”

For a few seconds Ilhoon had thought his little angry outburst had actually worked, but of course Changsub just had to open his damn mouth again.

“Really? Then how come you had a date with some guy on Valentine's Day?”

Instantly Ilhoon felt his blood run cold. He gripped the armrests of his revolving chair and whipped around to eye Changsub incredulously.

“How'd you even know that?” he squeaked, cringing at hearing his voice crack at the end.

“Well," Changsub smirked while sitting up on the couch he had previously been lounging on, taking a theatrically deep breath "I went to our favorite diner yesterday - expecting nothing out of the ordinary - when I  _suddenly_  -" he interrupted himself, relishing in Hyunsik's surprisingly rapt attention on him and then continued "spotted a certain picture on the wall."

Again he made a pause, this time he was full on grinning, his eyes excitedly switching from Ilhoon's to Hyunsik's a few times before settling on the latter's.

"Now listen to this, Hyunsik: Our Ilhoon won in a  _Best Couple_ contest!" 

Whatever Ilhoon had expected, it wasn't that. He had completely forgotten about that weird contest the cupid waiter had told him about, didn't even know that he had agreed to take part in it in the first place.

Changsub must have sensed his confusion - or simply seen it in his face - because he raised his eyebrow in a hint of disbelieve and started talking again, only this time a bit calmer and less like he was telling an adventurous children's story.

"You seem surprised. Well, so was I when I went there to eat with my friend only to see a picture of you hanging there on that big ass 'Valentine's Best Couple' placard."

He shrugged helplessly. "So we asked them what that was about and they said that you guys won a coupon and had already been informed. Though it seems like they somehow made a mistake, or did they contact you?"

"No!" Ilhoon croaked out before getting his voice under control again "I never even gave them my contact info!"

"Wait," Hyunsik suddenly interrupted "it's a real story? I thought Changsub hyung was only joking around!" His eyes went to Ilhoon's face, looking as confused as the other two.

Ilhoon just threw him an annoyed glance.

"What about your date, maybe he gave it to them?" Hyunsik asked, back to being his practical self and ignoring Ilhoon's petulance.

The thought of Minhyuk getting a call informing him about having won at some couple contest with Ilhoon nearly made him choke on his own saliva.

He shook his head instead, slumping a bit in defeat.

"I wouldn’t know. I don’t have his number. It wasn't even a real date to begin with! We only wanted to get the couple discount on the food."

Hyunsik whistled quietly, earning an elbow in his ribs from Ilhoon.

Changsub, meanwhile, had a dangerous glint in his eyes.

"Is that why you've been so weird lately? You like this guy, but don't think he likes you back?" he asked with a shocking amount of sincerity.

Ilhoon had had enough of that topic though, so he simply gave a noncommittal shrug and turned around again.

"It doesn't matter anyway. Let's just get back to work."

Surprisingly, Changsub really did drop the conversation then. But for the whole remainder of the day Ilhoon could feel his thoughtful gaze on him. It sent a shudder through his body, Changsub thinking was never a good sign.

**Author's Note:**

> here's the link for the prompt by the way: http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/154345462891/person-as-favourite-restaurant-holds-a-special


End file.
